Bird Box Review

James here, I watched that new Netflix movie Bird Box and I have opinions about it if you care to listen.

Also this is a spoiler-free review (Above the Read More Line that hopefully doesn’t disappear)

1. Supernatural or psychological or metaphorical in someway? Supernatural, although it does try to say something about us as humans. Not sure what is was though.

2. How scary was it? Not scary. It has some tense scenes here and there throughout its two hour run time. Some may find parts creepy. 2/10. This may be considered a spoiler, but you do not actually see any monsters. So a good strong 2/10.

3. Jump scares or nah? I don’t think so.

4. Is there blood and gore? Yeah there is a decent amount of blood.

5. On a scale of 1 – 10 (10 being Alien: Covenant), how dumb were the characters? Fairly dumb. Like 7/10. Not horrendously dumb, but there were a few backbreaking decisions anyone logical would have avoided.

6. Does that story make logical sense if you think about it too long? There were some gaps.

This is the movie about Sandra Bullock and others trying to survive the apocalypse when it comes in the form of monsters that take the form of your worst fear/deepest sorrow that drive everyone that beholds them to commit suicide. The story is told in two timelines. The first we’re introduced to, is 5 years into the apocalypse, where Sandra Bullock takes her two kids down a river in search of a sanctuary she heard about over the radio. The second, and the one we spend more time in, is at the beginning of the apocalypse, where pregnant Sandra Bullock escapes from the chaos in the streets into a house filled with a strange eclectic cast of characters. It really did seem like the producers were trying to tap into as many different audiences as possible, as the cast included John Malkovich as a grumpy old man, B.D. Wong as the nice homeowner we all mistook for John Malkovich’s husband, Jackie Weaver as someone who we all forget about until she appears back on screen, Lil Rel Howery, and Machine Gun Kelly (??????????). These characters, along with others are introduced with a couple personality traits each and feel like they are going to be fleshed out, as if this were lost. A few of them are, though. And we can guess what happens to them, given them we don’t see them in the other timeline 5 years ahead, which makes them a bit difficult to care for.

This movie is not A Quiet Place. It tries to transcend the horror genre by being fake deep, but all it gives us is the lesson that “You may be apathetic now but you will redeem yourself when you become a mother” and good performances from Sandra Bullock and Trevante Rhodes. It also lacks much of the suspense (again, we can tell with 95% certainty from the get go most these characters aren’t gonna make it) and dread of A Quiet Place.

Another thing that bothered me in this movie were the secondary villains. They were people that had seen the creatures but survived and became dedicated to showing other people the light. It’s explained later that these people weren’t driven mad by the creatures, because they were mental patients, who were mad to begin with. That detail really didn’t need to be in there.

I know a lot of people liked this movie, judging by twitter’s reaction, but I have to give is a 4/10.

Why did Rosa Salazar and Machine Gun Kelly run away? They pretty much had it made.

I liked Tom but if my sister was named Olympia and I was named Tom I would be mad.

The drawings were kinda cool, but still, show me the God damn monsters.

Nothing in the world seems to happen in 5 years.

The scene where they were in the boat and started hearing somebody call to them was kinda scary until we saw the redheaded hillbilly that looked like somebody out of Gravity Falls.

Sandra Bullock: Olympia don’t look!

Olympia: What was that? *looks*

The kids were really cute.

John Malkovich’s “Make the end of the world great again” speech was when the the studio executives decided this movie would be released on netflix.